


Two Dorks and a Dumpster

by qwartooty



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: F/M, spoiler-free
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-20
Updated: 2016-03-20
Packaged: 2018-05-27 20:21:30
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,421
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6298993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qwartooty/pseuds/qwartooty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He kept telling himself it was simple, that this whole ‘love’ thing was going to be a piece of cake.</p><p>But then the cake crumbled. Somewhere along the line, Adrien fell in love with someone else… without falling out of love with Ladybug.</p><p>(Oneshot in which Adrien is a total dork.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Dorks and a Dumpster

**Author's Note:**

> Adrien is SUCH A DORK.

Adrien never thought of love as a very complicated thing. One day together with Ladybug and he simply knew it was love. It was such an easy thing to feel! Why did movies always make it so complicated?

He knew he had to tell her eventually. While he slowly built up the nerve, he listened to her voice without distraction. He believed in her ideas without hesitation. As Chat Noir he would follow her to the ends of the Earth because he was in love with all of her- with both the truth and the mystery of her- and his feelings for her got stronger and stronger every day. He kept telling himself it was simple, that this whole ‘love’ thing was going to be a piece of cake.

But then the cake crumbled. Somewhere along the line, Adrien fell in love with someone else… without falling _out_ of love with Ladybug.

“It’s her smile, Plagg,” Adrien groaned one afternoon, throwing his head down on top of his history textbook. He couldn’t focus on anything when his heart was being torn in two.

“I thought it was her _boldness_ and her _bravery_ ,” Plagg said, making air quotes with his paws.

“It's everything,” Adrien mumbled, his right cheek smooshed against a picture of Louis XV. “Marinette is so…” He trailed off with a sigh, realizing that even saying her name out loud was giving him butterflies.

“So obviously crushing on you too, dude,” Plagg finished the sentence for him as he dove back into his smelly wedge of Camembert.

Adrien groaned again, shutting his eyes. He loved Ladybug _and_ Marinette. “I’m a man whore, aren't I?”

Plagg’s laugh was muffled under copious amounts of cheese.

“Yeah, might as well quit school and become a pimp now,” the kwami replied sarcastically.

To make matters worse, Adrien’s double life definitely didn’t help simplify his double love-life. If he were to confess his love to Ladybug, she would only ever see how much _Chat Noir_ loved her. On the other hand, if he confessed his love to Marinette, she would only know how much _Adrien_ loved her. The problem was that he loved each one with all of his being, but he could only show his love with one half of himself.

Plus, he had seen enough chick-flicks to know that secrets were a bad idea in any relationship.

“I really don’t see the problem,” Plagg said, rolling around in a pile of clothes on the dressing room floor. They had just finished a photo shoot where the photographer kept yelling at Adrien to get his head out of the clouds.

Adrien struggled to get the v-neck he’d been wearing off over his head. “I’m having the biggest crisis of my life and you don’t see a problem?” he asked through the fabric of the shirt.

“Chill, Romeo. You’re like, fourteen.”

Adrien huffed, insulted.

Plagg continued, “You could always date both of them.”

Adrien finally got the shirt all the way off, revealing a mountain of disheveled hair above an absolutely terrorized expression.

“Plagg!”

“Everything alright in there?” Natalie’s voice cut through the dressing room’s curtain.

“Uh…” Adrien panicked. “I said, what a drag!”

“…I’m sure your father will be pleased with that attitude,” Natalie replied flatly.

As the days rolled into weeks, Adrien grew restless with nervous energy. His distracted thoughts got the best of him even in battle, and Ladybug was starting to notice.

“You ok, Chat?” she asked him one morning while they were fighting an akumatized pie baker. Chat had just been slammed in the face by another beam of ice cream (“à la mode!” cried the baker) when Ladybug noticed something was different.

“I’m better than ever,” Chat assured her, not wanting to talk about his girl problems with one of the girls that was causing him problems. “And I bet I taste better than ever, too.”

“Ugh.” Ladybug grimaced, gently pushing him away. “You’re sticky.”

“You know what else is sticky?” Chat wiggled his eyebrows suggestively.

Ladybug paused to stare at him, her expression unreadable. She stared at him so long that she failed to miss the next ice cream attack, and the baker cried in triumph.

“You’ve been-“

 _Please don’t say it_ , Chat silently prayed, knowing he wouldn’t be able to resist making another regrettably vulgar joke.

“-creamed!”

As soon as Chat Noir transformed back into Adrien later that morning (it felt like much, _much_ later that morning), he slumped against the nearest wall and buried his face in his hands. “Kill me, Plagg,” he begged.

“I would, but I’m already dying from second-hand embarrassment,” Plagg said. “I blame sex education.”

As the weeks rolled into months, Marinette started noticing something was wrong, too.

“I-Is something wrong?” Marinette stammered, her face turning a bright shade of ladybug-red.

Adrien blinked, the dryness of his eyes informing him that he’d been staring. “Uh…”

“Adrien,” the teacher snapped. Adrien whipped around to the front of the room, mortified to discover that not only had he been staring, but he had turned a full 180 degrees in his chair in order to stare.

“Dude,” Nino mumbled, clearly disapproving of Adrien’s lack of smoothness.

Adrien stared hard at the blackboard for the rest of the school day, his mind going in circles as he felt Marinette’s gaze on his burning neck.

He liked them both.

He liked them both _so much._

That night, he dreamt of Ladybug. Or was it Marinette? Suddenly, they were impossible to tell apart. He reached out for her hand, passing through it like mist. She turned around, and then he couldn’t remember her name at all. Her laugh warmed his skin, her bluebell eyes shimmered like the Eiffel Tower’s lights at night, and her courage and brilliance was so strong it was nearly tangible.

Adrien woke up confused and heartbroken, because he finally figured it out. He loved them both to the point where he couldn’t choose. And even if he could, who’s to say they would love him back?

He couldn’t choose, so he wouldn’t.

“What’s wrong?” Plagg yawned, rubbing his eyes as he sat up on Adrien’s pillow. “Adrien? Why are you crying?”

Adrien didn’t reply. He sat up and pulled his knees to his chest, feeling so lonely for his current and future self that it physically hurt.

Plagg didn’t ask any more questions. He floated away into the darkness, leaving Adrien feeling even more alone in the dim glow of his alarm clock. Just when Adrien resigned himself to being this miserable for the rest of his life, Plagg was back, patting at his wet cheeks with something soft.

“Plagg?” Adrien’s voice cracked as he wiped one of his eyes, un-blurring his vision for a moment. Plagg hovered in front of his face, holding one end of toilet paper in his paws. Adrien followed the length of toilet paper with his eyes, the white squares stretching the length of his bedroom and disappearing through the bathroom doorway.

Adrien’s eyes started to prick again, this time for an entirely different reason. He broke out in laughter, grabbing Plagg and holding him close to his chest.

“Hey,” Plagg complained half-heartedly. “Are you happy or sad now? Make up your mind, you weirdo.”

Adrien continued to laugh with tears in his eyes, and Plagg complained about mucus and salt until they both fell asleep.

It started raining the next day as Adrien said goodbye to his bodyguard and stepped away from the car. He was almost inside the school when he saw Ladybug swing past overhead, her yoyo zipping loudly, even through the storm.

“Plagg,” he hissed, bolting inside the school doorway and under the nearest staircase.

“But it’s raining,” Plagg whined.

They transformed and shot back outside where his father’s car was just pulling away. He headed in the direction he saw Ladybug go, wondering what his excuse for missing class would be today.

All thoughts of excuses were soon forgotten. As the rain poured and the thunder clapped, he couldn’t help but stare at the way the raindrops rolled down Ladybug’s neck.

“Watch out!” Ladybug yelled.

“Woops!” Chat barely managed to dodge an attack from the akumatized custodian’s broom. He jumped backward toward a streetlight and then clawed his way up the slippery pole.

 _Focus, focus, focus,_ he berated himself.

As he looked down at the lights and buildings reflected off the shimmering street, time seemed to slow down for Chat Noir. He was about to pounce on the custodian again when Ladybug managed to get her yoyo string around the broom, pulling with all her might. The broom snapped out of the custodian’s hands and he gasped, splashing through the puddles in an effort to get it back.

Ladybug was right below Chat now. She brought her hands up to catch the broom, but the custodian kicked at the puddle between them, splashing it up at her eyes. She was momentarily blinded, and the broom passed between her outstretched hands, slamming into the side of her face.

“Ladybug!”

Chat saw something glimmer and fall from Ladybug’s ear. As she turned and dove after it, a flash of red like lightning lit the street, and by the time Ladybug hit the pavement, she was no longer Ladybug.

She was Marinette.

It was only for a second, but there was no doubt. Her startled gaze made contact with Chat Noir’s, and in that moment, he let go of the lamppost, and he fell.

Chat landed on the custodian. They were a tangle of limbs, and Chat rolled away in time to see Marinette grab something from the puddle and bring it to her ear.

“Tikki!” she gasped. There was another flash of red, and Chat closed his eyes against the brilliance of what he knew must be her transformation.

The custodian took the opportunity to grab his broom and run, splashing through the puddles and disappearing around the nearest corner.

“Y-you… You’re,” Chat sputtered, still lying in the puddle.

Ladybug turned away to follow the custodian, clearly planning on running from this new problem.

“Wait,” he croaked in awe, watching her sprint away through the rain. He was shaking, his heart pounding loudly in his ears as everything came to a brilliant, beautiful light.

The two halves of his heart clicked together.

“Wait!” He shouted loudly this time, jumping up and following her into the alleyway. The air in his lungs seemed to expand like a helium balloon, and he felt like he wanted to scream or explode or blast off into space or _something_.

“Ladybug,” he called after her. “Marinette!”

Her steps faltered, and she stumbled to a halt beside a dumpster.

“Ah!” Chat stumbled past her, his foot catching on an uprooted brick, sending him skidding palms-down into another puddle.

“How do you know my name?” Ladybug’s voice shook through the downpour. Chat turned to see her chin lifted as she peered down at him wearily, arms poised as if she expected a fight.

“My Lady,” he whispered, reaching for her hand.

She tensed back, not letting him grab her hand.

“Chat,” she said, and it sounded like a warning.

Chat Noir’s face was burning up beneath his mask. Ladybug’s cheeks had lost all color, going pale from shock and fear.

He needed to explain to her why he knew. He needed to tell her how he felt about her, about Ladybug and Marinette, how he was okay now because they were both _her_. They were both here, and he was here, too- both sides of him- and _oh no_ he could not stop smiling and it was definitely freaking her out. He needed to tell her all of this somehow in the next few seconds or she was going to punch him, or drag him off to an insane asylum, or possibly both.

“My Lady,” he repeated, liking how it sounded even more when he realized he was also calling Marinette _My Lady_.

He knew what he had to do.

He lifted one knee off the ground and set his foot down in front of him.

“Ladybug, Marinette, My Lady,” he started, closing his left hand over his right hand in front of him and twisting his ring.

Ladybug’s eyes went wide. “Chat, wait-“

Chat slid his ring off and the alleyway filled with green light. Ladybug shut her eyes for a second, and when she opened them, she saw Adrien Agreste kneeling before her in a puddle, his hair and clothes drenched with rain, his face a ridiculous shade of red complete with a giddy grin, and a small black fairy-cat creature shivering on his shoulder.

“Will you marry me?” Adrien said, holding up the ring.

For a moment, the only sound was the rain. Ladybug’s shocked expression only got worse as the seconds ticked by.

“ _What!_ ” Plagg shrieked, cutting through the silence.

“Wait,” Adrien said, suddenly looking uncertain.

“’Wait’ is right!” Plagg continued shrieking. “Might I remind you that you are in junior high!”

Adrien suddenly looked like he was slapped back to his senses. “Y-Yeah, okay, that was definitely too much.”

“No kidding!” Plagg screeched. “And you are _next to a dumpster!_ ”

Adrien looked over at said dumpster. “Oh, god.” He looked back at Ladybug. “I just wanted you to know how much I like you,” he started rambling, “and I wanted you to know that Chat Noir was me, and that Adrien was also me, because I found out you are you, and I swear this made sense in the moment but in hindsight-“

“A-Adrien?!” Ladybug exclaimed, her mind finally grasping the situation. She grabbed the dumpster with one hand to steady herself.

Adrien smiled up at her sheepishly. “Hi.”

Ladybug’s face burst into flames. “W-Well,” she started, looking everywhere but him. “W-We should, uh, probably catch up to the custodian first, because he knows my identity…”

“Oh!” Adrien leapt to his feet. “We can’t let him tell Papillon!”

“Y-Yeah,” Ladybug agreed, starting to move past the dumpster stiffly.

“Plagg, claws out!”

Another burst of green light, and Adrien had transformed back into Chat Noir.

Ladybug immediately relaxed. “Alright, let’s go,” she said, all hesitation in her voice gone now that he was Chat Noir. She shot her yoyo up and zipped away in pursuit of the custodian.

Chat Noir gazed after her, the grin still stuck to his face.

“I’ll propose to her for real, some day,” he decided aloud.

He could already hear Plagg nagging him: _“Slam the breaks, Romeo!”_

He glanced at the dumpster and sighed.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me at <http://qwartooty.tumblr.com/>


End file.
